Tessa (From Fear to Faith) (17 page)

34

W
hen I awoke in the morning, my headache was almost gone. To my relief, the lump on my head seemed smaller as well. Although Mom didn’t ask how I felt, I could tell she was relieved to see me up and walking around. She even made me pancakes and scrambled eggs for breakfast.

“What’s the occasion?” I asked, as I sat down and forked two pancakes onto my plate.

“It’s Christmas Eve, silly.” Mom passed me a bottle of syrup. “Don’t tell me you didn’t know that.”

I shrugged. “I haven’t paid much attention. What’s the point, if you’re not gonna celebrate anyway?”

“Who said we’re not gonna celebrate Christmas?”

I laid down my fork and looked at her. “Really, Mom. I’m not a little kid. You don’t have to sugarcoat things for me.”

“Okay, then I won’t. I made the pancakes because we’re out of bread. I really need to run into town and get some, but I don’t trust either of you enough to leave.”

“Great. I guess we’ll starve then.” I slathered the hot pancakes with butter, then added just enough syrup to make them sweet but not soggy.

“Actually, I’ve half a mind to ask Ericksons to stop over for an hour and keep an eye on you guys.”

“Mom, seriously. I’ll behave, okay? How many times do I have to tell you that?”

She raised her eyebrows and continued eating. I knew she had good reason for not trusting me, but still, it stung. Too bad Walter hadn’t overheard the proposal. He’d make a proper fuss about it. But he was sitting in the easy chair with his leg propped up, picking at his food while he watched the morning news.

Finishing off my pancakes, I retreated to my bedroom. I couldn’t stop Mom from calling Tom and Patty, but I could hide out in here the whole time and pretend I wasn’t home. I was way too old to have the neighbors coming over to look after me.

I should’ve known Mom would spoil my plans. She stopped by my room a short time later to tell me the dishes needed washing.

“That’s not my problem,” I retorted.

“Now, Tessa.”

“Okay! Just give me a minute.”

I had barely started the dishes when the red SUV pulled in. Glancing around for Mom, my eye fell on the pistol lying next to the microwave. What would Tom and Patty think? I quickly shoved it into the corner and tossed a dish towel over it.

Mom let Tom and Patty in the kitchen door and took them straight to the living room. She clicked off the TV and said, “Walter, you’ve got visitors.”

“Get them outta here!” Walter bellowed. “I don’t want no visitors!”

“You did last night.”

Walter swore. “I said, get them outta here! And be quick about it!”

“Just make yourselves comfortable,” Mom told them. “There’s coffee in the kitchen.”

“Julie!” Walter yelled. “What did I tell you about people in the house! You’re gonna pay for this! Now get them outta here before I do it myself!”

“Forget it,” she yelled back. “You’re nothing but a brat. I can’t trust you, so I got you some babysitters. You better get used to it.”

“Shut up!” he screamed, adding a string of curse words.

Mom didn’t stay to listen to him. She grabbed her purse off the kitchen table and left, slamming the door behind her.

In her absence, Walter turned his sights on Tom and Patty. “All right, you two. Get out of my house right now, or I’m having you arrested.”

“Sorry, but we’re staying.” Tom’s quiet voice carried a surprising amount of authority.

“No you’re not. Tessa!” he yelled. “Where’s my gun?”

I covered my mouth to keep from laughing out loud. Did he really expect me to bring his gun? Not that I could do it anyway. I was pretty sure Tom would intercept the thing long before it reached Walter’s hands.

In the living room, someone switched on the TV. Patty started coughing. Then she came out to the kitchen. “Hi, honey. How’s it going?”

“It’s going.”

“Is he always like this?”

“Yeah, more or less. Since he got hurt.”

“That’s too bad. You want to finish washing these dishes, I’ll dry them for you.” She reached for the dish towel in the corner.

“Wait…”

My warning came too late. Patty jumped as if she’d uncovered a huge spider. “Oh!”

“Sorry.” I grabbed the gun and shoved it on top of the refrigerator. “That was . . . ah . . . not supposed to happen.” I laughed nervously. “Mom had it out last night and forgot to put it away.”

Patty nodded. “Okay. Any other land mines I need to know about?”

“I don’t think so.”

With Patty’s help, the dishes were cleaned up in about fifteen minutes. Patty poured herself a cup of coffee, and we sat at the table, talking some, but mostly listening to the conversation in the next room. How Tom had managed to get Walter talking I could not guess.

“Don’t you ever wish you were a good person?” Tom was asking him.

“A what?” Walter choked. “Of course not. Is that
why she dragged you in here? So you can reform me? Well, forget it. I like the things I do. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t do them in the first place.”

“So you like yourself the way you are? You’re happy and content with how your life’s going?”

“Yeah. Sure. Couldn’t be better.”

“You could’ve fooled me. You look miserable.”

“Look, Mister Know-It-All. If you was stuck here with a bunch of broken bones and that stupid woman driving you crazy all day long, you’d be miserable yourself. But she’s gonna pay for it.”

“That’s not what I was talking about. When you’ve got your freedom and you can do whatever you want, it’s easier to cover up what you don’t like about yourself. But it’s still there, isn’t it.”

“Leave me alone! My life was fine until that stupid accident.”

“What if you knew God could change your heart and make you good?”

“Don’t you talk to me about God. He hates me.”

“No. If God hated you, he sure could’ve let you get killed in that accident. God cares about everybody, even real bad people.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard. God cares about people who care about him. Which I don’t.”

“Walter, that’s not true. Jesus hung out with bad people all the time because he cared and wanted to help them. He even picked some of them to be his disciples.”

“You really believe all that stuff?” Walter tried to laugh, but his throat was tight with anger. It came out more like a cough.

“Have you ever read the Bible for yourself?” Tom asked.

“No! I don’t wanna, either.”

“Walter, God loves you so much that he sent his Son to die for you. He wants you to repent and believe the good news.”

“What?”

“To repent means you feel so bad about the wrong things you’ve done that you’re willing to give them up. It also means you’re willing to give your life to God, which is the only way you can stop doing what’s wrong.”

“I said, leave me alone! Can’t you hear me? I don’t
wanna talk religion! So beat it!”

Tom waited until Walter’s wrath was spent. Then he said, “Do you know what will happen to you if you don’t repent?”

There was a long silence. “’Course I know,” Walter muttered. “You don’t hafta tell me. I’ll sink straight down to hell, and everybody will say good riddance.”

“That’s a very honest statement you just made,” Tom said. “Are you content with that kind of future?”

Walter swore. “There’s no way out. I’ve got to take it.”

“You don’t have to take it if you’ll repent and believe in Jesus.”

“I said, I don’t wanna.”

“All right. I’m not going to try to make you. But if you ask him, God can make you want to do it. It’s entirely your choice: death or life.”

Walter was silent for a very long time. When he spoke, his voice was so low I had to slip over to the doorway to hear him. Patty followed a step behind me.

“I had a dream the other night,” he was saying. “It was horrible. I was being dragged toward hell, and I couldn’t stop. I begged and begged to stop, but I just kept going toward that awful blackness. Finally I stopped, right there on the edge.”

He paused, breathing heavily.

“It was Judgment Day, and I knew I deserved to go to hell. It was terrifying, no way to describe it. If Julie would forgive me, I could go to heaven, but I didn’t think she would. I’ve never been so scared in my life. All of a sudden I knew I was gonna be forgiven, and I was so happy I started laughing and crying. But then it hit me that I didn’t belong in heaven. It would never work. I cried out and said, ‘God, give me another chance!’

“Believe me, it was real. I can’t say how terrible it was, knowing God was gonna throw me in hell forever, and there was no second chance. But if that wasn’t bad enough, I had the whole cursed dream over again last night. Only this time, as I was waking up, something said to me, ‘If you don’t turn today, it will be too late.’”

Walter’s voice trembled. “What do I do?”

35

I
listened in stunned disbelief as Walter followed Tom in a simple prayer, asking Jesus to forgive his sins and come into his heart and life. Patty threw her arms around me and cried. It was an emotional moment for me also, although I didn’t know whether to be joyful or indignant. How could God even think of forgiving someone like Walter? Shouldn’t he have to pay for the evil things he’d done?

Walter finished praying. “Something happened,” he said, his voice full of wonder. “I-I don’t know how you say it.” Then he began to laugh. But it wasn’t the old sneering laugh I so despised. It was so happy and genuine that Tom joined in. Patty pulled me around the corner into the room and joined in too.

I hung back and stared at Walter. Was this for real? Was he really a changed man? He certainly looked the part as he sat with tears streaming down his face, laughing for joy.

Behind me, the back door opened, and I heard a rustle of plastic shopping bags as Mom hurried into the kitchen.

“Tessa?” She got as far as the doorway and stopped dead. Her mouth fell open as she stared at Walter.

He grinned back at her. “I let Jesus come into my heart,” he said. “Julie, it’s awesome. You gotta do it too.”

Mom looked from Walter to Tom. “Did you give him some kind of drug?”

“No, ma’am. Just preached the gospel to him.”

“Well, that’s fine. Just don’t turn him into a fanatic like yourselves.”

“It’s too late,” Walter said. “You can’t go halfway with something like this.”

A worried expression crossed Mom’s face. She turned back to Tom. “Well, I’m back, so I guess you guys can leave now.”

Tom nodded. “Just give us a couple more minutes, okay?”

“Yeah,” Walter chimed in. “Don’t throw my new friends out already.”

Mom threw up her hands in mock dismay. “Okay, you win. I’ve got to get my groceries put away.” She turned back to the kitchen. I followed.

“So, how’d this happen?” she asked in a low voice.

I shrugged. “Tom got him talking and asked if he was happy with his life. Walter was pretty mad and yelled at him to shut up, but eventually he gave in and prayed with him.”

“Wow. I never would’ve guessed it.” Then she looked hard at me. “You’re a Christian too, aren’t you.”

I nodded. Was she accusing me of it, or simply asking a question?

“I kind of thought so.” She paused. “You know, I prayed the sinner’s prayer myself once.”

“The sinner’s prayer?”

“Yeah. You know, when you ask Jesus to come into your heart and all that.” Her face flushed, as if she was ashamed to talk about it. “I was six years old. I had pneumonia real bad, and Dad thought I was gonna die. He told me I had to get saved or I’d go to hell.”

“Oh.”

“So, I prayed the prayer. Don’t think it did me much good, though.” A cynical smile crossed her lips. Then she shrugged. “But hey, if it works for you, great.” She lugged a grocery bag over to the pantry and began stacking cans of soup on the shelf.

I wished I could say something to change her attitude about it. But I didn’t want to start an argument. I was afraid she’d try to talk me out of what I believed. It would be better to let the subject drop.

I turned to leave the kitchen, then remembered something. “Say, do you think I could go to a Christmas Eve service with Tom and Patty? They’d give me a ride and everything.”

“That’s tonight?”

“Yeah. Seven o’clock.”

“Fine. I don’t see any harm in that. But don’t be gone late.”

It was all I could do to keep from jumping up and down. She’d said yes to something! Before Patty left, I told her the good news. She pulled me close and gave me another hug, then promised they’d pick me up around six thirty.

The afternoon passed in a strange blur. Walter kept telling Mom about Jesus, and he even tried to preach to me. Mom alternated between playing along and totally ignoring him. I avoided him as much as possible. As remarkable as the change in him was, inside I was still bitter and afraid of him. I didn’t trust him. I doubted I ever would.

***

The church was already packed when we arrived for the service that evening. I sat between Heather and Patty in the fourth pew from the front, clutching an unlit stub of a candle and listening as a group of grade school kids took turns reading the Christmas story from the Bible. The beauty of the story gripped my heart. I’d never heard it before.

When the reading ended, the organ began to play, and everyone stood up to sing. I tried to follow along with the words projected on the screen, enjoying the rich sounds of the organ and the blended voices.

After three or four songs, the lights dimmed way down, and a curtain up front parted to reveal a live manger scene. Around me, candles flickered to life one by one. Heather lit hers, then touched the flame to mine. Everyone sang “Away in a Manger” as a procession of children portraying the shepherds and the three wise men joined the manger scene.

I glanced around the darkened room at the hundred or more tiny flames, each one illuminating a face. The scene was lovely and strangely moving. I blinked back tears as we sang the final carol.

“How’d you like it?” Heather asked, as we waited for her grandparents by the coat rack afterwards.

“It was awesome, especially the manger scene. I’m glad I got to come.” I took my coat from its hanger and thrust my arms into the sleeves. Then I glanced back to see whether Tom and Patty were coming, and my heart stopped.

No. It can’t be.
There, stylishly dressed in a maroon sweater, scarf, and short black skirt, stood Pat, the police officer. She was talking to Patty.

“It’s okay,” Heather said, following my gaze. “Pat’s a good friend of ours.”

“Oh great.” I turned my back and concentrated on zipping up my coat. I hoped they weren’t talking about me. I didn’t want Patty to know I’d been arrested. But when I dared to glance behind me again, Patty was hugging a frail, white-haired lady in a purple dress. Pat had disappeared. I breathed a sigh of relief.

“Let’s drive around and see some Christmas lights before we go home,” Heather suggested as the four of us stepped out into the slushy parking lot a few minutes later. “We haven’t done that yet.”

“Do you think your mom would mind?” Tom asked me.

“She won’t know. She’ll figure I’m still at church.”

“I’m sure you’re right. But if she did find out, would she care?”

I was silent. Why did he have to be so particular about everything?

“She might,” I muttered. “How do I know?” I followed Heather into the back of the SUV and slammed the door.

“I know what,” Tom said, as he started the engine. “We’ll drive up through town and go home the back way. I think there are some good displays along Washington.”

“Sounds good,” Patty said. “I’m really tired.”

The light displays were only mediocre, but it was still more Christmas lights than I’d seen all season. I arrived home in a buoyant mood.

I found my parents sitting together in the living room – him watching TV, her reading a magazine. It had been months since I’d seen them getting along this well. With a prayer of thanks, I slipped away to my bedroom, fearful lest my presence upset the fragile peace.